Summary: On a mission in Germany, a building explodes and Clint is hospitalized, losing the use of his greatest asset; his sight. Post-Avengers. T for language, some minor adult themes (nothing too major) and maybe a little violence. Clint centric but has all of the team there.

And Coulson didn't die, at least not in my story. Phil Coulson is waaay too awesome to die. I think I'll have to write a separate AU explaining exactly how he lived sometime.

This story is un-beta'd, so I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors, spelling errors, et cetera. Feel free to point them out to me in a review or PM, and constructive critisism is welcome.

This idea popped into my head and wouldn't go away. I'm pretty sure it's been done before, but I'm also pretty sure it's never been done quite like this...so enjoy.

Disclaimer: I'm not Joss Whedon, or Stan Lee, or Jack Kirby, or anyone else who played any part in the Avengers film...so I don't own any of it but the writing.

Clint hated light.

He didn't have a good reason for his strange aversion; maybe it was because he had spent more than his fair share of time under the harsh fluorescence of pristine hospitals while he was bleeding to death. Maybe it was because light gave him virtually no cover, leaving him feeling vulnerable and weak. Clint preferred the shadows, where he could hide under the secure blanket of darkness where no one could see him lurking.

Clint could see them, but they couldn't see Clint. That was the way he liked it.

Unfortunately for him, he was on a mission in Hamburg, which was a major city. It seemed to be a general rule that even during the night, every city simply had to be lit up like a freaking beacon. There was absolutely no cover.

It annoyed him to no end, and yet here he was, perched on the darkest rooftop he could find, peering into the high-arched windows belonging to a man named Archibald Krause. The man was grotesquely huge and hairless - there wasn't a single tuft of hair on his head, from what Clint could see of him. Archibald Krause was his target. He was on SHIELD's hit list, had been for months since Baldie came out and admitted to consorting with several of SHIELD's enemies and selling weapons, hiring assassins, etc. Krause had gotten himself into a pretty deep pile of shit and pissed off all of the wrong people in high places...including Nick Fury.

Fury's irritation was why Clint had been sent on this solo mission with one purpose: use whatever means necessary to take Krause out before the guy started World War Three. He was getting dangerously close to doing so, too, which was the scary part.

Clint was forced to use a high-tech sniper rifle to do the job instead of his good old-fashioned recurve. Apparently Hawkeye's arrows wouldn't fit well into the whole incognito part of the mission. His signature arrows had resulted in him becoming world-famous, a fact that Clint was enormously proud of, but sometimes it was a pain to be known for his expert marksmanship.

"How you doing, Barton?" Phil's voice came through staticy on the comms.

"I need to get closer. Can't see anything from my vantage point," Clint muttered, peering through his high-tech binoculars.

"Let me know when you've got a better position."

Clint complied, folding up the gun and shoving it into a black case. He started down the fire escape, not really using the stairs so much as flinging himself over the railing one level at a time. He jumped from the last landing and hit the cobbled ground in an agile crouch.

Slinging the rifle bag over his shoulder, Clint briskly began walking down the alley towards another building that he knew would have less cover but a better shot at his target. No one saw him.

Seeing was very different from noticing.

Clint crossed the dimly lit street to the other building and began expertly scaling the usefully-ridged walls. It was a skill he had learned all those years ago in the circus and it had recently earned him the gracious title of 'Chimpeye' from Tony. Clint had scowled at the billionaire when he had mentioned the nickname, who had melted under the archer's intense glare, but he couldn't deny that he was becoming a Spiderman wannabe. It was a bit of a problem.

Clint reached the top of the building and hauled himself over the edge. He immediately flattened himself on the roof and crawled skillfully over to where he could see through Krause's window. Clint had spent two days observing the man's living patterns. When the criminal was home, which he was, he usually came for a late-night snack right about -there.

Krause came through the doorway of his kitchen and yawned. Grabbing cold takeout from the fridge, Krause plopped down on the leather couch and grabbed the remote, pointing it at something out of Clint's view -the television.

This was too easy. Krause might as well tape a sign to the back of his shiny bald head reading, "I'm over here, come blow my brains out!"

Clint's finger rested on the trigger. He squinted through the eyepiece of his gun and focused the back of Krause's head in his sight.

Clint tapped his comm device. "I'm in position."

"You're clear to take the shot, Barton," Coulson instructed.

Clint counted silently backwards in his head.

Three...

Two...

One.

He pulled the trigger and watched as the bullet tore through the glass of his target's apartment and into the base of his skull. The shot had been muffled by the silencer on his gun.

"Krause is out," Clint spoke to his comm in an offhand manner that only assassins could manage.

"Job well done, Clint. Make your way to the extraction point. Call us in when you get there."

The man had had no family to speak of. No one would miss him; that always had made Clint's job easier to carry out. No ties, no one to seek vengeance or revenge.

Clint packed up the gun into his bag and slung it over his shoulder. He adjusted the pack so it wasn't rubbing so painfully against the knife strapped to his waist, and shimmied back down the side of the wall. He hit the ground with barely a sound and wiped his dirty hands on his shiny black bulletproof jacket. The bulletproof part had been courtesy of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. It had even saved his life on a mission in Nepal.

Clint turned to hurry away from the scene. He began to hum a tune absentmindedly under his breath as he turned away.

Clint hadn't even gotten to the third note when the apartment complex that Archibald Krause had resided in abruptly exploded and Clint was thrown off of his feet and back into the alley that he had just emerged from.

Phil Coulson went stiff as he heard Clint's comm fill with static.

I've given up. I can't restrain myself from starting new stories once I've gotten an idea into my head, so why bother trying?

I think this will be my main story for a while, though. I've almost got 'Promise' and 'The Reflectionist' wrapped up (maybe), 'Jacquelyn' and 'Hell and Back' are kinda on hiatus, and 'Barney' can be an on-and-off kind of thing. So stay tuned. This is just the prologue, by the way. The chapters will get longer... they always do for me.

I'm free to beta anything, and I'm always looking for a good beta for my fics as always. Check out my other stories in my profile...most of 'em are works in progress though, and they're mostly Hawkeye, no slash, angsty humor...if you like that kind of stuff.

And if you know anything about me or have read a single one of my stories, you'd know that I like blackmail. So here's my bribe: reviewers get mentioned the next chapter! So review. Please? :D

Ciao,

-aporia